What are the “stages” of a tournament?

Most poker references will tell you that tournaments, including Sit-N-Go tournaments, occur in stages, and different skills and playing techniques are needed in each stage. Therefore, on the Skills Page of your report, and in your weekly Training Plan, we evaluate your performance based on the stage of the tournament. The stages are defined as below.

Multi-Table Tournament Stages

The stages of a Multi-Table Tournament, of course, depend on the starting number of players. The table below shows the stages, and also an example based on a hypothetical tournament that started with 1000 players, where the top 100 players are “In The Money”.

Stage

Players Remaining

Example (1000 players start / 100 paid)

Early Stage

The initial 50% of the player field

501-1000

Middle Stage

Everything else up to the Bubble Stage

201-500

Bubble Stage

Double the number of players that win money

101-200

In The Money Stage

All players that win any prize money

1-100

You may be surprised that we define the bubble stage so widely (when 200 players are remaining, in the example above). It’s important that we do this for two reasons. First, some players in the tournament will start thinking about the bubble at this point. Especially those that are just trying to survive to make the money. Therefore, if you’re a big stack, it’s important that you take advantage of this. And second, we need to have enough data in the bubble stage to get accurate reports.

Sit-N-Go Tournament Stages (Starts with 9 players)

Stage

Players Remaining

Early Stage

8 or 9

Middle Stage

6 or 7

Bubble Stage

4 or 5

In The Money Stage

2 or 3

Some references don’t include 5 players remaining as part of the bubble stage. But, it’s correct to start thinking about the bubble even when there are five players remaining. And, we need to have enough data in the bubble stage to get accurate reports.